Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, during rollcall No. 7, rollcall No. 8, and rollcall No. 9 on January 24, 2012, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on H. Res. 516, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the passage of a fiscal year 2013 Federal budget is of national importance. I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 2070. And I would have voted ``yea'' to instruct conferees to file a conference report on the Payroll Tax Cut no later than February 17, 2012.

Mr. Speaker, during rollcall No. 5 and rollcall No. 6 on January 23, 2012, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted to suspend the rules and pass both H.R. 1141 and H.R. 3117.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Reverend Joseph Lee Johnson, a dynamic leader of the religious community and a founder of the Police Chaplains Program in the City of Richmond, California--and to mark his passing on January 9, 2012, at the age of 93.

Born in Westdale, Louisiana on September 3, 1918, to the late Adeline and Bill Johnson, J.L. Johnson was one of twelve children. In December of 1937, he met Ida Mae Gilliom--they were married two weeks later on January 11, 1938. He and Ida Mae remained happily married for nearly 74 years.

In September 1943 he and Ida Mae moved to Vallejo, California, where he Worked at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. It was there that he united with Union Baptist Church where he served on the Deacon Board until 1950, when he was ordained and became Pastor of St. John Missionary Baptists Church in Vallejo. He continued to pastor at St. John Church for over 21 years. Reverend Johnson organized the Baptist Ministers Union of Vallejo, and was elected its first president. In addition, he was president of the Interdenominational Ministers Alliance for many years, organizing local clergy around issues such as promoting civil rights, ending hunger, and curbing violence.

Reverend Johnson also started one of the first food programs in Richmond where he was instrumental in working with government agencies to provide cheese, butter and other food to local churches to feed low- income families.

He was a peacemaker. During the social unrest of the 1960s, the Bissell property where Elizabeth Missionary Baptist Church is now located was, at the time, the local headquarters

for the Black Panther Party. Reverend Johnson and others negotiated with the late Huey P. Newton and Party leaders to acquire the building as a church and an outlet to serve the needs of the community. In the early 1980s, Reverend Johnson played an integral role between African American police officers and the City of Richmond Police Department to address racial divisions within the department. Those efforts resulted in the very first Police Chaplin Program in the country. Reverend Johnson and other ministers rode with police officers to provide spiritual counseling, comfort and prayer to men and women of the force as well as victims of violence and their families. He served as a Police Chaplin for almost 20 years.

Reverend Johnson received his Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and his degree in Christian Doctrine from the Divinity School of Oakland Seminary. He was a mentor to many young preachers and pastors, and worked tirelessly beyond the boundaries of his faith community by counseling and advising local civic leaders. Reverend J.L. Johnson was a very proud man who would often say, ``As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'' His presence will be greatly missed throughout our community. I ask my colleagues to join with me in offering sincere condolences to his wife of 74 years, Ida Mae Johnson and to the entire Church Family of Elisabeth Missionary Baptist Church.

Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, it is so unfortunate that today we find ourselves continuing to argue over whether or not an extension of the middle class tax cut should take place now as opposed to continuing to try to load the bill up with poison pills, cutting off people's unemployment insurance, and getting into an argument with the Senate.

The proposal after a year of deliberations that the Republicans came up with was rejected in the Senate on a bipartisan basis. Another bill was passed overwhelmingly to give us a 2-month extension so that we can continue to try to work out a long-term solution to a middle class tax cut without accepting poison pills.

But now what we see is the Republicans choose to turn down that compromise that brought the Senate together, that can bring this House together, to refuse to let us have a vote on that measure because they know there will be bipartisan support for that measure in this House.

We can come together and, in this holiday season, give American middle class families the security that they will have a continuation of the tax cut on January 1, but that's not what the Republicans are going to do. They're going to throw families and our economy into chaos for the sake of trying to make political points.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately with the procedure that the Republicans are using today, we miss an opportunity for the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, to come together around an extension of the middle class tax cut for the next 2 months. It's unfortunate that it's for 2 months, but the Republicans in this House sent to the Senate a very extreme bill for 1 year by slashing people's unemployment benefits, ruining those families' ability to survive this period of economic downturn. And the Senate rejected that on a bipartisan basis.

The Senate was then encouraged by the Speaker of the House to negotiate a deal. Harry Reid and McConnell negotiated a deal, and the Speaker of the House said he thought it was a good deal. In fact, he used the word ``victory.''

Then when the suggestion was why didn't we vote last week, it was, well maybe when it came back from the Senate we could do it on some sort of unanimous consent procedure.

Then there were rumbles in the House that there were going to be Republicans in the Republican caucus that wanted to join the 39 Republicans in the Senate that voted for this procedure. And all of a sudden what we see is the emergence of the Tea Party Republicans slapping down that idea, slapping down the idea that there'd be independent judgments made in the Republican caucus, and they pulled it to a grinding halt. We will not be allowed to vote on that bipartisan agreement. We will not be allowed to vote on an agreement that brought the Republicans and the Democrats together in the Senate. We will not be able to vote on a bipartisan agreement that has the opportunity to bring Democrats and Republicans together in the House. That's because the Tea Party insists upon this radical agenda where they're going to throw millions of people off of unemployment insurance who've lost their job through no fault of their own, and that's how they'll pay for the middle class tax cut, by injuring middle class families who've been thrown into economic chaos because of the economic downturn caused by their friends on Wall Street and the scandals that they've perpetrated on the American people.

Let's bring people together. Let's pass the Senate bill, and let's get on with taking care of the problems of this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Contra Costa College President McKinley ``Mack'' Williams and congratulate him as he approaches his well earned retirement.

Born in San Francisco and raised in Richmond, California, McKinley attended local elementary schools and graduated from Richmond High School. He earned his Masters of Science degree in Counseling from San Francisco State University and a Masters of Arts degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. It was in Colorado that McKinley began his teaching career as a Professor of Ethnic Studies.

Upon his return to the Bay Area, McKinley worked as a marriage and family counselor as well as a Professor of Psychology at Merritt College. During his early career, McKinley served as a Director of Research and Planning and Dean of Instruction at Merritt College, as well as Dean of Instruction at the College of Alameda.

As a well-respected expert in his field, McKinley has presented professional papers at many conferences dealing with community colleges and conducted research on critical issues facing educators. In 1990, McKinley joined the administration of Contra Costa College as Dean of Instruction. In 2005 he was appointed Interim President until July of 2006 when he was named President of the college. The college faculty and staff as well as the students who attended Contra Costa College are justifiably proud of the development of programs under McKinley's leadership. He has assembled a staff of educators who day after day helped him deliver on the promise of a quality education for all. Dedicated to breaking barriers to education for all students, particularly African American males, McKinley Williams has made a decided difference in the lives of thousands of our Bay Area youth.

In addition to his commitment to higher education, McKinley has lent his time and talent to a wide variety of organizations in our community. He serves on the board of the Richmond Children's Foundation, on the Schools-To-Careers Advisory Board for West Contra Costa Unified School District, is a member of the Leadership Advisory Committee for El Cerrito High school and serves on the Executive Board of the National Consortium of Middle College High School. He is also one of the few honored male members of The Black Women Organized for Political Action and is a lead singer for the popular gospel group Consonance. He is active on both the Richmond and San Pablo Chambers of Commerce and an active member of the Richmond-Pinole Lions Club.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to publically recognize Costa Community College President McKinley Williams and thank him for his tireless work that has left an indelible imprint on our community. Through his leadership, he has ensured that students of all ages are well prepared for continuing education, new careers, and life. On behalf of our children, families and the communities served so well by his tenure I thank McKinley Williams, and wish him a healthy and happy retirement.

Mr. Speaker, 1.1 million Californians stand to lose their unemployment benefits if Congress fails to do its job.

And the bill before us today is the perfect example of Congress failing to do its job--yet again.

Let's be clear what's going on here.

Republicans in Congress have opposed every effort by President Obama and Democrats in Congress to create more American jobs and to rescue our economy from the worst recession to since the Great Depression.

They even opposed extending the payroll tax cut that the President signed into law last year that expires at the end of this year. That tax cut is worth $1,000 to the average American. If Congress does not extend the payroll tax cut, Congress will be increasing taxes on middle class workers by $1,000.

Republicans in Congress have also opposed extending unemployment insurance for the millions of workers who have not been able to find work for no fault of their own.

First, they block efforts to create jobs. Then they oppose extending to them unemployment insurance.

Unbelievable.

Now, they are feeling enormous public pressure to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits. Democrats would pay for the cost of the payroll tax cut for middle class workers by slightly increasing taxes on people who earn more than $1 million per year.

Republicans refuse to increase taxes by any amount on people who earn more than $1 million a year.

Instead, they propose paying for the payroll tax cut by cutting unemployment insurance benefits.

Unbelievable.

Their bill cuts 40 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits from people in my state of California, and in 20 other states as well.

We wouldn't need long-term unemployment insurance if Republicans were serious about solving America's economic problems, but they are not serious about solving problems. In fact, they refuse.

No new jobs under their watch.

No new taxes on people who earn more than $1 million per year under their watch.

But, it's ok to cut unemployment benefits that help create jobs and keep food on middle class families' tables.

Now, to add to the indignity of it all, Republicans want to drug test those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Have the Republicans in control of Congress forgotten how we got into this recession in the first place?

It was Wall Street that recklessly drove our nation's economy into the ditch. And millions lost their jobs because of it.

And the crisis persists in part because the majority refuses to do anything about it.

You'd think that the unemployed caused the job crisis.

The unemployed didn't sell toxic securities. They didn't sell trillions of dollars of phony credit default swaps. They didn't blow up the global economy.

No, that was Wall Street aided by lax oversight from Washington.

If the Republicans want to drug test people who get benefits from the federal government, I suggest they look at Wall Street bank executives who drove our economy into the ditch in the first place.

Congress should not demonize the unemployed who are desperate to get back to work.

Unbelievable.

Mr. Speaker, Congress has a job to do. It is our responsibility to work together to help put Americans back to work, to ensure our tax policy is fair and balanced, and to make sure that Americans have unemployment insurance benefits to help carry them and their families through while they are looking for work.

This bill would cut unemployment benefits by 40 weeks for the unemployed in California and 20 other states, and then it would require drug tests for those who do get benefits. This bill should be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Iran Threat Reduction Act, though I do have concerns about new language added to the bill in the Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is my hope that this language will be corrected before this bill advances.

The passage last year of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISADA) was a key step in the effort to prevent Iran from gaining the ability to develop a nuclear weapon and it is important that we continue to apply pressure to the Iranian regime.

It is clear that if President Ahmadinejad and his regime were allowed to access a nuclear weapon, Iran would pose a significant threat to global stability and security and a threat to the security of the State of Israel.

This bill is an appropriate next step as we work to increase pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program and end its open hostility toward Israel and the United States. By authorizing new sanctions against Iran and by imposing sanctions against additional activities, this bill successfully expands on the precedent set by CISADA and sends the right message to Iran and to the international community.

However, as I said, changes were made to this bill during the committee process that raise questions about whether or not the bill inappropriately limits the ability of any American President and his or her entire Administration to conduct diplomacy with Iran. This new language could end up jeopardizing American security by preventing our diplomats from resolving minor issues before they become more serious disputes.

The Obama Administration, for example, has done an excellent job to this point in addressing the threat of a nuclear Iran. Just last month, the Administration imposed additional sanctions on Iran, including labeling Iran as a ``primary money-laundering concern.'' The Administration should also be commended for ensuring the success of sanctions by securing the cooperation of the international community in imposing serious sanctions that had not even been considered by many of our allies until President Obama's pressure led them to toughen their stance against Iran. It makes no sense to tie the Administration's hands now, particularly given the successful efforts by President Obama to toughen the international community's stand against Iran.

The lead Democratic sponsor of this bill and the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, my good friend Mr. Berman, has made clear that he does not believe that this bill should limit the President's ability to conduct diplomacy as he sees fit, and I agree with that assessment. Like Mr. Berman, I believe that this issue must be clarified in conference to ensure that this bill does not inadvertently exacerbate problems that it is intended to fix.

I believe that it is imperative that we continue working constructively with our allies to strengthen sanctions against Iran and so I urge my colleagues to support this bill and to ensure going forward that it is implemented in a productive way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember and pay tribute to the tremendous contributions made to our community by my friend and constituent, Ralph Stanford Griffin, who passed away on December 1, 2011.

Ralph Griffin, a native of San Antonio, Texas, worked and raised his family in the San Francisco Bay Area, retiring as an educator and administrator from the Oakland Unified School District. Ralph was a lifelong champion of equal education for all, services for the developmentally disabled, and support for African American families in our community.

His passion and determined advocacy was in no small part the catalyst for establishing the Black Families Association of Contra Costa County (BFA) in 1973. As Founding Members, Mr. Griffin and his wife of 50 years, Norma, together with a small group of their peers saw the need for African Americans in their community to have an outlet to discuss current events and provide support to one another. In an era where racism and biases still prevented equal access to housing and education, the BFA was a place where neighbors could come together to guide and help one another through these challenges. It was and remains an organization that promotes cultural heritage, pride, and dignity within the community, and provides scholarships for deserving high school students.

Ralph Griffin further extended his commitment to students' access to higher education as a dedicated member of the Kennedy-King Memorial Scholarship Fund. He was instrumental in helping the Fund provide annual $8,000 college scholarships to students from minority groups often under-represented at California's four-year colleges and universities. It is due to Ralph's commitment that so many of our brightest graduating high school students have been able to continue on to higher education.

To Norma, their sons Stanford and Steven, and the entire Griffin family, I extend my heartfelt condolences. Your loss is shared not only by those who knew Ralph personally, but also by all of those touched by his work. I ask my colleagues to join me in remembering Mr. Ralph Griffin, a courageous and compassionate man who shared his time and talent freely for the betterment of our entire community.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, later today, the House will consider the REINS Act, which is legislation designed to make sure that in a Republican-controlled Congress, no new regulations would be put into effect, whether they deal with clean drinking water, clean air, child safety, the safety of children when they play with their toys, the drugs that so many citizens need to take to maintain their health, or occupational safety at the workplace. All of that would be destroyed under the REINS Act.

You might ask yourself what would society look like? Well, we had a preview of what that society looks like yesterday when the Mine Safety and Health Administration released its report on the Upper Big Branch mine. What that society looked like to these miners and to their families was 29 dead coal miners, because the Massey Corporation was basically allowed by its board of directors to evade the basic regulations that were in place to protect the miners.

Although the miners don't have whistleblower protections, we saw that Massey was able to intimidate the workers every day not to report safety violations, not to write up safety violations, not to report things that needed to be repaired, because the chairman of the board told them the priority was the production of coal, not the safety of the workers.

Produce the coal or get out is what he told them. So they were not able to participate in their own safety when they saw a violation or they saw a problem that caused danger in the mine.

They also were able to circumvent the right of the mine safety inspections

in the mines because they gave advance warnings. They were told if a Federal mine inspector comes onto the property, you must give advance warning to the people in the mine so they can divert the mine inspector away from the problems in the mine, take up their time while we can fix them, or he'll run out of time to inspect the mine. There's regulations against that. There's laws against. They avoided those.

Then they kept two sets of books so that the mine regulators couldn't see the real level of violations in the mines. That's what it looks like when you don't have regulations. That's what it looks like when you don't have enforcement.

And it's the conclusion of the mine safety report that mirrors one that was done by the State government. The conclusion is that the tragic death of 29 miners and serious injuries of two others in the Upper Big Branch mine were entirely preventable--entirely preventable-- had regulations been enforced in that mine, had this company not been allowed to go rogue and ignore the regulations that are there to protect the miners' lives.

We must now understand what that means to the American public, what it means to these families.

What could have been contained, what could have been contained as a mine or a coal dust explosion or a localized methane gas explosion became an explosion that traveled 2,000 feet per second--2,000 feet per second. There is no miner that could get out of the way of that act.

And what happens at the end of that world without regulation, where you don't have to put up with paying fines, where you can clog the courts with appeals? When the Massey Company was sold, the board of directors that allowed this to happen, the executive officers that directed this to happen, the officers walked away with $90 million in bonuses; the board of directors walked away with $19 million in bonuses. And Don Blankenship, the CEO of the company that wrote the memo that said it's production of coal or get out, it's not safety, walked away with $86 million.

And now get this: Don Blankenship, the CEO, now wants to go back into the coal business after killing 29 miners. And whether it's the State of Virginia or the State of West Virginia or Kentucky or anywhere else, the suggestion is that they might be able to give him a permit to open up a mine. Twenty-nine miners are dead, violations of law, a criminal corporate culture, and somebody else says that they might be able to go back into the mines.

You will not reignite the American Dream for workers in this country if you take away their rights at work. You will not reignite the American Dream for the middle class if they have no rights at work, if they're subjected to this. For these families who lost the 29 members of their families, they're crushed. They're crushed. But you can't do that by eliminating the regulations. It's the regulations in place that have saved miners' lives; but it's the avoidance of the regulations, the ignoring of the regulations, and it's the failure of this Congress to introduce tough sanctions.

When you obstruct a Federal safety investigation, it should be a felony. Somebody should go to jail. When you obstruct the right of a worker to blow the whistle on an unsafe procedure, there's got to be a strict fine for that. That's how we reignite the American Dream.

We've got a lot of work to do in this Congress, but you can't do it by stopping all regulations that protect our families, that protect our communities, that protect the workers in America today.

I want to thank the ranking member for yielding.

The legislation before us today would really destroy the ability of the Congress to create new regulations, to create laws to protect the health and safety of the American citizens. It would also provide a great second bite at the apple for every special interest in this

country that doesn't like the regulations to protect clean water and safe drinking water and the health and safety of our workers and our children at play.

If you're wondering what it would look like when we wipe out the health and safety protections for Americans, you need to look no further than the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, where an explosion ripped through the mine and killed 29 miners in April of this year. That mine was operated as if there were no safety regulations. They treated their workers as if there were no mine safety rules at all because they overruled all of those regulations through criminal activity, through illegal activity, and those miners were forced to work with essentially none of the value of health and safety regulations designed to protect their lives.

And what happened in that mine without those regulations and without the benefit of those safety protections? An explosion ripped through that mine, traveling 2,000 feet per second, and it consumed the lives of 29 miners. Twenty-nine workers died, and their families will never be the same.

That's what happens when you take away the basic worker protections intended to make our economy function and to keep our workers safe. And that's what this bill on the floor today would do.

Now it's even more interesting that the man who broke the laws, created that system of no regulations for the miners in the Upper Big Branch Mine for his own personal benefit and the benefit of that of the corporation and at the expense of his workers, may be getting back into the mining business. Donald Blankenship got an $86 million ``golden parachute'' after 29 mine workers died in West Virginia. And now he wants to open a new mine. People who live in coal-mining States like Kentucky should be aware that a serial violator of basic mine safety laws is coming to your State soon seeking to operate a mine. Mine companies under his leadership have engaged in dangerous and deadly practices that would pose a threat to mine workers in your State.

In the 2 years preceding the explosion of the Massey Company mines, they were cited over 10,000 times a year for violations. Under this provision, the coal mines come into Congress, they get the regulations, they cease to exist, and they can go on their way, and there won't be 10,000 citations for the violation of occupational health and safety to protect those miners, and other miners will lose their lives like those in the Upper Big Branch Mine.

I say to my colleagues in this House, you must defeat this incredibly offensive bill for every American, and you must do so in the name of these 29 mine workers who were killed in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. They died because a ruthless mine owner gamed the system. Let us not have them game the system in the Congress of the United States.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, this is a very sad day for America's workers. This country has spent great time and effort, along with the industrial base and the business base in this country, to make sure that when workers go to work every day they will return safely to their home. This legislation begins to bring that to an end because it would needlessly and recklessly expose our Nation's workers to preventable work-related death and injuries. It would do this by obstructing the ability of the Federal agencies to adequately respond to real safety and health concerns of our Nation's workplace.

Under the current law, both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration would be tasked to protect workers from exposure to risks or toxins over a working lifetime. However, this legislation would override that task. It would change the nature

of the idea of protecting workers in the workplace to make sure we have the most effective means possible to protect those workers.

It wasn't the dust standards that killed the textile industry in the southeastern part of the United States. The dust standards that were invoked in 1978--that were railed against by the textile industry--in fact extended the life of the textile industry by making it more efficient by bringing in a new generation of technology to that industry. What killed those textile industries were free trade agreements. They were among the most efficient mills in the world. They just couldn't stand up against the unfair competition from the Chinese and their textile industry.

So let's understand what's happening here. This bill would change the standard of providing the most protective standard that is feasible to providing a standard that picks the least costly approach. The least costly approach to protecting your hearing is to cover your ears, to cover your ears while you're working on a ramp at an airline factory, cover your ears while you're putting bags on an airplane. Cover your ears; that's the least costly. Eye protection: close your eyes, cover your eyes; that's the least costly. That doesn't work in the workplaces of America and the employers know it. The employers know it.

What do you say to an ironworker working on a bridge? What do you say to an ironworker working on a skyscraper? Hold on tight? Hold on tight? We saw what happened when they went to the least costly effective restraints on workers working on skyscrapers in Las Vegas. They were killing them--a record rate of killing construction workers--but it was the least costly. They didn't think they should have to string a net three floors down to catch the workers as they fell; they just chose another method, the least costly.

That's the Republican answer to safety in the workplace, stick your fingers in your ear? What do you do about breathing toxins? Get yourself a paper mask?

When we started changing the vinyl chloride standards, not only did it make the workplace more efficient, it protected the workers. It created a byproduct that had great commercial value and expanded the industry by making them more efficient. What they used to waste, they now sell. What they used to waste and injure workers with, they now sell. That's the difference.

This standard, what is it, the least costly approach? Don't tell that to United States Steel in my district. I just went on a safety tour with the workers and with the management, and they told me how they've changed the traffic patterns, the pedestrian patterns, the vehicle codes, all of the changes inside of the steel mill because they want injury-free days, injury-free months, and injury-free years.

Take a tour of the Chevron refinery in my district, Dow Chemical, DuPont. Safety is their number one job daily in that facility, and they take pride in it. They invest a lot of money in it because they know what an unsafe workplace, what a dirty workplace, what a cluttered workplace costs them in lost time and productivity.

This bill goes counter to the best practices in industry, counter to the best practices in small businesses. This just doesn't work in modern industry. This is a throwback to the seventies or the sixties, where miners just assumed they had to consume coal dust and die of black lung; where steelworkers, they fell into open-hearth furnaces in the old mills. Today, you can get run over by a coal roll conveyance system, you can get caught up in a rolling line, but you don't because they invest in your safety. And now the American Government is telling them you won't have to invest in this safety.

I think for most industries they're going to ignore that because they've been to the other side. They know what it was like to have casualties, and they know that that doesn't work. They know they can't stand. You can bankrupt the companies with black lung today and cotton dust.

We still have grain elevators blow up in this country. When I came to Congress, they were blowing up on a daily basis. But we have dust standards now and we saved workers lives, but we still tragically have a few accidents.

You can ignore the standards, as they did on the British Petroleum rig, and you can kill the workers because you avoided the process safety standards on that rig. In Texas City, Texas, you can blow up the workers because you ignore the standards--and they knowingly ignored them. That was the least costly they thought, at British Petroleum, was to ignore the standards. When they went to the boardroom in London and they raised this issue with the board of directors, they chose the least costly approach. They chose the least costly approach. And they had one of the worst safety records in America, British Petroleum, of blowing up their own facilities and killing their workers. They chose the least costly approach.

This legislation imposes--if you want to do something right, it's just delay for delay's sake. And the chairman has pointed that out and Mr. Cohen has pointed that out, how you just turn this over to a litigation process before you ever get around to the question of protecting your workers.

This legislation makes the workplace that our family members go to, that our neighbors go to, that our friends go to less safe than it is today.

It impedes the progress to apply new technology to new knowledge to the workplace to make it safer. That's what this legislation does. That's not what a modern corporation wants; that's not what a modern workplace should be for workers who go into it; and it's not where they want to go to work.

It's just unacceptable that we have this legislation at this time in our history. This legislation is an attack on the workplaces where middle class Americans go to work. These are their workplaces. These are the hot, heavy, dirty workplaces. These are the complex workplaces that pose risk of injury and illness to the workers in our workplaces.

This causes you to fall out of the middle class. Millions of Americans are falling out of the middle class because of the income disparity in this country and the unfairness in this country.

There's another way to fall out of the middle class. You can fall out of the middle class; it's not just a question of lower pay. You can get hurt on the job, you lose your income, you become disabled, you can't go back to your full earnings. You end up on a disability program because you were injured on the job. All you did was show up and go to work. But under this legislation, you're more likely to be hurt.

You can reverse the dramatic downturn in black lung, as we saw in the Massey mines, where they wouldn't clean up the coal dust, and they killed 29 workers in the process. Over thousands of warnings, but the lawyers and the litigators prevented the standards ever from coming into place, the penalties from ever being put into place. They completely gamed the system.

That's how you can fall out of the middle class; or you can die in an explosion, as people did in Tennessee earlier this year, as they did in Georgia earlier this year, because dust standards weren't properly met; or as happened in Connecticut, where they didn't apply the safety standards to disconnecting the natural gas lines. Yes, you can do that and you fall right out of the middle class.

You lose your spouse in a construction site, in an injury, a trench caves in, a worker falls off a skyscraper--that's how you can fall out of the middle class. And it happens, it happens to American families every day.

We made a decision, as a Nation, that we would go in a different direction. We would look out for these workers, we would provide margins of protection, we would improve the safety in the workplace. This legislation undoes that for workers all across the country--the least costly way.

You know, I worked in the refineries in my district, and I saw workers fall face down in the bottom of those huge oil tanks that we were cleaning out because they had no respiratory gear, because it was before OSHA. I saw workers throw up.

I worked on the tankers going out to sea, and I saw workers fall a couple of stories into an empty oil tank on an oil tanker because they weren't connected to the ladders; there was no safety device. You went up the ladders; but if the fumes got you first, you fell. I saw workers that couldn't tell you what

day it was when they came out of those tanks after cleaning them.

I saw workers fall into vats in the canneries when I worked in the canneries.

I saw workers on construction jobs get hit by moving equipment when I worked on a construction job. This isn't speculation. This is what happens to people all across this country every day they go to work.

And yet we stand here, in the Congress of the United States, and we say we want to make sure when a member of your family goes to work, that they return home safely every day. That's not what this legislation does. This legislation makes it more likely that they're not going to return home safely and they're not going to return home at all.

We ought to reject this legislation and understand how far back in the past it takes us. It's against the best business practices of this Nation. It's against all of the success we've had in making the workplace safe for the workers and safe for the employers and safe for the profit measure.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), a member of the Rules Committee.

I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the House, during the depths of the Great Depression, Congress gave the American worker the right to ban together with coworkers and to bargain for a better life. For more than 75 years, the National Labor Relations Act has vested the ultimate decision on whether or not to form or belong to a union with the workers themselves. The principle underlying this law is that when workers decide they want to have a union, they should get a union.

These rights and this law have served this country well. They built the middle class. They brought us the 40-hour

workweek. They brought us safer workplaces. The exercise of these rights ensured economically secure families and the prospect that our children could build an even better life. These rights have been an unqualified success. They helped to create an economic engine unparalleled in the history of the world.

But especially this year, forces have gathered that will do anything to take away those rights from American workers, from American families. These forces subscribe to the perverse ideology that says workers should just accept whatever the powerful decides is good enough for them, and that's the end of the discussion. They use real crises as an excuse to gain more power. We've seen them try it in Wisconsin and in Ohio and all across the country, where the real goal was to take away the rights of workers, not to solve the economic problems of those States; where the real goal was to constrain workers in the collective bargaining process, not to deal with the economic problems of those States; and where they don't control the statehouses and State legislatures, they have come to the Congress of the United States.

This bill today is part of that scheme. This bill is part of a national effort by the Republican Party, by the Chamber of Commerce, and much of the business community in this country to strip workers of their rights at work; to take ordinary working men and women and tell them they will have no rights to join a union; they will not be able to gather for an election because this legislation prevents that election from happening.

How does it do that? It does that, one, by having the employer decide who will be in the bargaining unit, not the employees as is dictated under the law and as affirmed by this Congress over and over again that decision belongs to them.

How does it do that? So it stuffs the ballot box at the outset, and the employer making up the bargaining unit as opposed to the employee. Then they throw in the ability to have whatever frivolous appeals, whatever frivolous issues you want to raise, no matter how frivolous, they must be raised before this time, before the election, and all of the appeals must be decided. So while they talk about how this gives you a tight time frame, in fact what we see is endless delays. It's the endless running up of legal costs of attorneys on both sides, all in the idea of buying time for the employer to intimidate the employees from joining a union, to constantly hold businesses and the workplace-- face to face, businesses to advocate against the union so that they can turn around the decision that the employees essentially have made when they say, We want to go to an election; we want to have a union; this is our bargaining unit. And that's the goal here is to destroy the ability of this law to function.

You cannot have a situation where that exists in this country, because this law is not only important to employees in the workplace. It's important to millions of Americans who are in the middle class in this economy today. These are people who are there because of the collective bargaining rights of people over the last 75 years in this country to bring the benefits, to bring the wages, to bring the job security, to bring the health care benefits, to bring the pension benefits and the protections to middle class families.

We have seen, as the unions have declined, so have the wages, so have the benefits of workers to their own productivity. The American worker continues to increase their productivity. They are the most productive workers in almost every sector of our economy in the world, and yet more and more of their productivity is being syphoned off by the 1 percent, if you will, by the employers that decide they need more bonuses, by the employers that decide they need bigger paychecks, by the employers that decide they need more shareholder dividends, by the employers that decide that they need more golden parachutes, they need more arrangements to get rid of people at the elite level.

That's what this is about. It's about stealing from the American workers and not giving them a right to continue to bargain for the benefit of their families and their communities, and we ought to reject this bill today.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the committee.

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a ranking subcommittee member of the committee.

I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the Democratic leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), a member of the committee.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the minority whip, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

If anybody thinks that this is just a technical change, let's understand what has gone on since the Republicans have taken control of the House. The first effort was they cut $50 million out of the NLRB account. Then there was an amendment on this floor to try and zero out the money for the NLRB. Then they passed a rule that said that you could retaliate against workers and you could move work away from those workers. You could outsource it, and they enshrined the right to outsource work to retaliate against workers. And now we have the effort to try and prevent elections from taking place. This is a systematic effort joined in by a number of States and the Republicans in this Congress to take away the rights of workers at the workplace in America, the basic rights that have built the middle class.

And while they've continued this campaign against the NLRB, thank God the NLRB has continued to work because we see today that a settlement has been reached in the Boeing case, and you don't get to retaliate against workers. The new 737 work will go to Washington; the 787 will continue to go to South Carolina. The NLRB worked that agreement out between employer and employee. And let's remember, Boeing is on the record they didn't support the legislation that was put on in behalf of their name. So that worked out.

And just a few minutes ago, the NLRB apparently voted on a compromise rule dealing with elections. And so that compromise rule hopefully will now become a permanent rule and that will go forward. That's what the NLRB does: It works out these arrangements between employers and employees over these issues about how the American workplace will be managed, but it does not strip away the basic rights of workers to choose to join a union. It does not allow you to retaliate against the union.

It does not allow you to delay elections to such a point that you finally beat the union into submission or people give up, they get dispirited and move away. It doesn't allow that. That's the basic labor law of this country.

So today the NLRB, working with employers and employees, has reaffirmed that principle. Today in this House, they continue the effort to try to strip workers of their rights. They continue the effort in light of the evidence that these things get worked out in the workplace. Yes, these are contentious. They're big issues. But we have a vehicle that's 75 years old that has worked well on behalf of this economy. Not only did it build the middle

class in this country, it also built one of the largest economies. Why? Because we have the most productive workers in the history of the world industry after industry after industry, however you measure it.

Why aren't our steelworkers competitive with China? Because our plants are cost competitive on ton of steel, but when you manipulate the currency, our people can't win. But our workers continue to be there every day. And now, thank you to the work of the NLRB working out these arrangements, the NLRB will continue to be there every day for employers and employees to settle their differences.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Federal Workers' Compensation Modernization and Improvement Act. This bill reflects an initial step to modernize and reform the Federal Employees Compensation Act (FECA).

FECA has provided workers' compensation benefits to federal civilian workers injured or killed on the job since 1916.

Administered by the Labor Department, FECA provides workers' compensation coverage to over 2.7 million civilian federal and postal employees.

The law covers FBI agents shot in the line of duty, guards wounded in facilities operated by the Bureau of Prisons, and federal firefighters risking their lives to protect lives and property. It also covers Members of this body and their staff.

For example, following the January 8th tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, which killed 6 and injured 13, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords began receiving medical care and intensive rehabilitation services covered by FECA. This law also covers her staff.

As we examined reforms, the Committee was guided by three key principles embedded in the law:

First, workers and their families should be no better off, and no worse off, than if the worker had not been injured.

Second, all federal civilian workers, regardless of the branch of government in which they are employed, should be covered under the same benefit structure.

Finally, workers are entitled to be fairly compensated in a timely manner, with benefits administered in a non-adversarial manner.

As the committee worked in a bipartisan manner to update the law, there were immediate areas of agreement. Specifically,

This bill increases maximum benefits for funeral expenses and facial disfigurement, both of which haven't been raised since 1949.

H.R. 2465 clarifies that injuries caused by acts of terrorism are covered.

The bill expands the pool of medical providers and expands their authority to certify traumatic injuries for purposes of authorizing claims for continuation of pay. The added providers include physician assistants and advanced practice nurses, such as nurse practitioners, consistent with the scope of practice authorized by state law.

The bill includes program integrity improvements that were recommended by the Department of Labor's Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office. For example, the Department of Labor will have authority to access a claimant's Social Security earnings information to track whether the claimant is receiving prohibited payments.

The bill addresses the difficulty in filing workers' compensation claims for federal employees injured in ``zones of armed conflict'' by extending ``continuation of pay'' for traumatic injury from 45 days to 135 days.

The Committee received other reform proposals from the Department of Labor at a May 12, 2011 Subcommittee hearing, but there was insufficient evidence to support adoption of these changes, and the hearing revealed that further detailed study was needed to ensure there were not unintended effects.

We note with some concern that the Senate has reported legislation modeled after the Department of Labor's proposal which would reduce benefits for permanently injured workers with dependents, cut benefits for permanently injured workers when they reach retirement age, and slash benefits for survivors of workers killed on the job.

As previously mentioned, workers and their families should be no better off, nor worse off, because of a disabling injury or death caused by while in service to the federal government. Members of Congress must be assured that reform proposals do not lead to inequitable outcomes, particularly in light of the fact that FECA is an exclusive remedy.

To assess the impact of DOL's other proposals, the Education and Workforce Committee has agreed on a bipartisan basis to ask GAO to evaluate the Administration's additional proposed reforms. This approach is consistent with the recommendation of the Inspector General, who has urged careful consideration before Congress changes the structure of benefits to ensure that injured workers are treated fairly. Before Congress acts, it is important that we take great care to ensure that further reforms are fair to taxpayers and injured workers.

Once GAO completes its work, we will analyze their findings. At that time I believe we should also examine whether Congress can generate savings from measures to further reduce work-related injuries and illnesses and to better facilitate the re-employment of injured workers.

I am encouraged we have advanced bipartisan bill to improve the program and deliver savings to taxpayers and the Postal Service.

I want to thank Chairman Kline, Chairman Walberg, Senior Democratic Member Woolsey for their cooperation and efforts in developing this legislation.

Attached to this statement are letters of support for this bill from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Treasury Employees Union, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the Workers' Injury Law and Advocacy Group.

Federal Law Enforcement

Officers Association,

Washington, DC, July 18, 2011.

Hon. John Kline,

Chairman, Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Hon. George Miller,

Ranking Member, Committee on Education and the Workforce,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Miller: I am writing

on behalf of the 26,000 members of the Federal Law

Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), to express our

support for H.R. 2465, the ``Federal Workers' Compensation

Modernization and Improvement Act.'' Our organization, has

long worked to address major flaws with the Federal

Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) system, and we appreciate

your efforts to advance these common sense reforms.

On July 21, 2010, I testified before the House Subcommittee

on the Federal Workforce and highlighted situations in which

federal law enforcement officers injured in the line of duty

were made worse by the FECA-Office of Workers' Compensation

Program (OWCP) system. One of those officers--Special Agent

Mike Vaiani, who was injured in the September 11th terrorist

attacks in New York City--summed it up best: ``I would rather

run back into the tower while it's on fire than have to deal

with the Department of Labor.'' To their credit, after the

hearing both the Directors of the Federal Employees

Compensation Program and OWCP met with FLEOA and agreed to

establish traumatic care nurses for law enforcement injuries

and a law enforcement officer Ombudsman in each OWCP

district.

Despite this positive development more work is still

needed, and FLEOA applauds this legislation which the

Education and the Workforce Committee unanimously approved

last week. This bill is a positive step towards addressing

many of the underlying issues with FECA that prevent injured

federal law enforcement officers from receiving responsive

care. Specifically, FLEOA fully supports the ability to allow

physician assistants or advanced practice nurses to provide

certifications of traumatic injury and related disability;

the extension of compensation for death and disability for

individuals employed outside the United States to include

death or disability caused by terrorist attack; and providing

additional compensation for funeral expenses and for injuries

that lead to facial disfigurement.

Further, FLEOA fully supports the provisions of your bill

to extend continuation of pay (COP) for traumatic injuries

sustained in a ``Zone of Armed Conflict'' to 135 days. On

this particular point, FLEOA has long advocated for

increasing the COP time frame. For those officers assaulted

by a suspect, exposed to a toxic substance, or shot or

stabbed, or involved in an explosive blast while enforcing

the law, this time frame would better allow for a proper

evaluation to determine if a return to work will be possible.

We would therefore request that due to the often traumatic

nature of the injuries incurred, that you consider including

all Federal law enforcement officers under this extended COP

period.

On behalf of the membership of the Federal Law Enforcement

Officers Association, thank you for your efforts on this

important legislation and for taking the steps to bring these

long overdue reforms to FECA. Our organization stands ready

to work with the Committee on further common sense reforms

and to include federal law enforcement officers in the

extended COP provision of this bill.

Sincerely,

Jon Adler,

National President.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Seventy-five years ago this Nation decided as a matter of right and a matter of law that the decision of whether or not workers wanted a union belonged to those workers, and this Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act to give workers this right and an election to decide.

Ever since that time, companies have fought to take away the right of the workers because they believe that the companies control all of the rights in the workplace. They believe that the workers should simply take and do as they say, and that's the end of the discussion. And this has been a battle throughout the economic history of this country since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.

But the fact of the matter is that when workers decide they want an organization, they go out and they talk to their fellow workers, they form a union, and they have an election.

But what we now see is the companies constantly trying to insert themselves into that worker-controlled process by trying to disrupt the elections of those workers and trying to keep them from exercising their rights under the law. And this is the goal of this very antiworker, antifamily legislation. It would end the collective bargaining rights for working people in this country because it would so skew the process that you would never get to that election that workers are guaranteed under the law.

This is Wisconsin and Ohio all wrapped up into one. This goes across the Nation. What they can't do in the States where they don't control the governorship or the legislature, where they made the attempt right after the election to take away workers' rights at work, where they can't do that, they now seek to do in the Halls of Congress, to so change the process and to discriminate against the rights of workers so that, in fact, the process ceases to exist.

How do they do that? They do that by having endless delays. Why are endless delays important to employers? So that they can hire union- busting law firms to come in and intimidate and teach employers how to intimidate workers because, don't forget, the employer has the right from the moment they're served notice to have captive meetings in the workplace where they threaten the workers with the loss of jobs, where they threaten the workers with being fired, where they threaten the workers of sending work to China or elsewhere, where they threaten the workers that they won't get the promotion, where they change the workers' shift time from maybe day shift to graveyard shift and keep rotating them around to show them that they're in control and the workers have no rights. And if you can do it for 7 days, you have a chance. If you can do it for 10 days, you have a better chance. If you can do it for as many as 2,000 days that these law firms have kept the process open, you can kill the drive for a union. You can intimidate the workers.

How else do they do it? When workers decide among themselves that we want a unit within this company, within this factory to represent us, this bill now says that the employer can come in and rearrange the members of the unit that would have that election. They can stuff the ballot box. They can pick your candidates to stand for election. Doesn't sound very Democratic to me. But that's what they get to do under this bill that's proposed.

The workers no longer get to decide, as the law says they get to decide. The workers no longer get to decide, as the Supreme Court says they get to decide. The employer gets to decide. The arrogance of these people to suggest that they should pick the leaders of the workers, that they should pick the organization of the workers who have a right to organize.

So they get to delay the elections. They encourage and provide for and define the right to continue to file frivolous lawsuits so that this process never ends. You can bankrupt these workers if they try to run head-on-head with these big law firms that are specialized in this, that travel around the country to take away the rights at work.

What does this mean? This means underpinning the basic organization in the American workplace today that speaks on behalf of the middle class. This is from the organization that brought you the great American weekend. This is the organization that brought you the 8-hour day. This is the organization that brought you overtime pay if you work longer than 8 hours. This is the organization that brought you sick leave. This is the organization that brought women their rights at work. This is the organization that makes safe work places. This is the organization that provided, for the first time, pensions and retirement benefits for workers.

Any wonder why these corporations, why the Chamber of Commerce is so set against this? Because they don't want to do this anymore. They want to ship the jobs to China. They want no minimum wage. They want a sub- minimum wage. They want no rights for workers. How will the American families survive that? They've already off-loaded all of the health care costs they possibly could.

They've off-loaded all of the pension costs they possibly could on the backs of these workers.

We should not allow that to happen, not in this country, not in this Congress. We should not allow it to happen to American workers and to their families. We should defeat this very anti-family piece of legislation.

As for regular order, I would like to remind the gentlewoman from North Carolina that when the vote came, there wasn't a single Republican vote back in the Clinton era. Not a single Republican vote. Once again, you balked when it came time to vote.